Items
Back to Game Mechanics Heroes can encounter items throughout the game and take them with them. When items are equipped, they will confer bonuses to the Hero. These can range from stat boosts to new traits, and some items can even cast spells! Items are typically found in item chests that can be dropped by certain units or sometimes just lying around maps. Chests that contain items will be closed. An open chest suggests it's empty or currently being searched by a Hero. Equipping / Carrying Items Item types Each Hero can only be equipped with seven items at any one time - but not any seven items. There are six different item types you can find: helmet/crown, body-gear (armor/tunic/robe/belt/necklace), boots, weapon, shield/banner, accessory (rings/orbs/harps/stones/tomes) Each item found will be assigned one of these types. Typically your Hero can only be equipped with one of each type, with the exception of accessory items where your Hero can carry two at once. Only items that are equipped on your Hero will confer their bonuses. Backpack In addition to being able to equip seven items, each Hero can also carry a further four more in their backpack. However, there are no restrictions to what items can be put into your Hero's backpack and so can be of any type. But items in your Hero's backpack do not effect your Hero in anyway - they are merely for storage. Furthermore, if your Hero falls in battle, he looses the contents of his backpack - they become a chest on the map for other Heroes to find and take for themselves. Campaign Item Stash While in the campaign map, players can visit a special item stash by clicking on a heading along the top of the screen. This item stash allows players to store another twelve items for their Hero. Like with the backpack, there's no restriction as to what items can go into the item stash. Item Rarity Rarity Chance When the game is forced to create an item, the value and therefore quality of the item is randomly chosen but manipulated by two factors. Firstly, the game separates items into classes. These are Minor / Lessor / Greater / Artifact and Set. The class of an item is decided first and start at Minor being the lowest class (most common) with Set items being the highest (rarest). Once a class has been randomly chosen, the game then rolls for a level. Each item in each class is assigned a level. These range from 1 - 10, with 1 being the rarest and 10 being the most common. The level roll is influenced by your Hero's level. The higher your Hero's level, the higher the chance of finding an item of a lower (rarer) level. Artifacts Among the many items you can find will be some special items known as Artifacts and Set items. These incredibly rare items are usually more powerful than the standard ones and are marked with coloured shining stars on their image to distinguish them. Artifacts will have blue shining stars and the text for the item's name will also be coloured blue. Artifacts can come in any item type except boots. Set Items Like Artifact items, Set items also have shining stars over their image. However, for Set items the colour of these shining stars and the item's name text is green. Set items get their name because they are apart of a set of usually 3-4 items. If your Hero manages to obtain all the items in a set and has them all equipped, then he'll gain a special power. Note that the power only remains while your Hero has all the items from the set equipped together. As soon as one of those items are removed, the power is immediately lost. Item Effects Stat Increases As you would expect, items typically offer blunt stat bonuses to your Hero, such as extra health, increases combat, a boost to speed etc.. Items can also increase a Hero's damage stat. If this was done through a weapon item, it may also change your Hero's attack damage type. Stat Decreases Not all effects from items are beneficial. Some items offer such potent effects that they will also some kind of hindrance to balance it out. Commonly these stat penalties reduce a Hero's spell casting chance, or attack speed. But there are a handful that do offer other penalties, such as reduction to your Hero's health stat, or movement speed. Hero Skill Bonuses Items can also offer points in Hero skills, even to skills that your Hero wouldn't normally have. These can be traits such as points in a magic sphere - allowing your Hero to cast spells, or even bonuses such as extra starting XP for specific units. Due to this wide range of complicated skills items can now have, this makes items a lot more interesting than previous installments of the series. Casting Spells If offering points in Hero skills weren't enough, items themselves can also cast spells! Each item that can cast a spell will have a fixed chance of casting it per melee attack the Hero makes - typically 5%. These spells will also have a preset level to be cast at - usually just level 1. Spells cast from items do take into account your Hero's cool-down timer from his own spells. So items can't cast spells if your Hero is already recovering from one. In addition to that, items that successfully cast a spell will trigger the cool-down timer - preventing further spells from being cast. As such, players with magic heavy Heroes should take all this into consideration when equipping items that can cast spells. Obtaining Items Item Chests on Maps Heroes can find items dotted around some maps, tucked away in chests. When your Hero comes close to a chest, he'll automatically open it. But otherwise you can press the "I" key on the keyboard to quickly open his inventory and any chests he is near. However, most of the time item chests can only be found lying around like this in the campaign. From Heroes Typically, most the time your Hero will encounter items from fallen Heroes (especially AI Heroes) - for when a Hero dies, any items in their backpack will be lost and placed on the map in a chest over their dead body for other Heroes to come along and take. This also means if your Hero were to die, then he too would lose all the items in his backpack. Equipped items are safe, though, and can only be removed by yourself. From in-game Shops Heroes can also visit shops found around many maps and purchase items there. However, due to the expense of them (~500 of each resource), buying them is no easy task and will take its toll in your current game. The actual price of these items are dependent on the item's value but can end up higher if the shop has taken damage. Each shop will only ever sell two items per scenario. From Quests Many quests will reward your Hero with rare items. There are even two items exclusive to quests and cannot be obtained any other way. Below is a list of all the items that can be obtained from quests and the name of the quest in brackets: Shrine: *Leprechaun's Lure (Pot of Gold) *Paladin's Helm (The Paladin) *Griffon Cloak (Griffon Cloak) *Dark Path Amulet (The Dark Path) *Monk's Staff (Monk's Staff) Mausoleum *Grollo's Storm Ring (Goblin Alchemist) *Grollo's Fire Boots (Goblin Alchemist) *Royal Runemail (Runemail) *Orc Lord's Belt (Orc Guards) *Frost Giant's Jarl (The Frost Jarl) *Fire Giant's Jotun (The Fire Jotun) *Doomshield (The Doomshield) *Ring of the Liche (Abandoned Treasure) *Axe of Dwarven Bane (Dwarvenbane) *Plague Sword (Evil Brew) From Lairs Upon destroying a lair will set loose a powerful unit, known as a Lair Boss. These units will have a special marker beneath their feet so they can't be missed. When this boss unit is killed, an item will be spawned in a chest over its dead body. Gifted from the Campaign Throughout the campaign, your Hero will be rewarded items for his efforts. In some cases you'll only get these items for defeating and stealing them from a race. Either way, these items are offered to you after completing the mission and once you have returned to the map of Etheria. Below are the items you can obtain from the Campaign and where: *The Aklys of Couatl / The Stones of Couatl / The Medallion of Couatl (New Selentia) *Fey Cloak / Fey Harp (Twilight Woods) *Cloak of Thyatis (Solhaven) *Orb of Thyatis (Yrm) *Crown of Thyatis (Guardia) *Staff of Thyatis (Colis Tarn) *Plagueshield (Sserin Jungle) *Royal Runemail (Kor) *Iceblade (Ehlariel) *Moonshield (Lunarion) *Orb of Healing (Silvermyr) *Banner of Zhur / Staff of Zhur (Zhur) Creating Items with Spells Heroes with access to the Rune Magic spell Rune Item (Runemasters, Elementalists and Dwarves) can create a set of exclusive items. These "rune" items range from lessor value to royal value, starting at lessor and increase in value as the spell is cast at higher levels. These rune items come in the form of a helm, mail, sword and shield. Heroes with access to the Alchemy spell Create Item can randomly create an item from the game. The higher the level the spell is cast at, the rarer the item that is created. Campaign Shops Throughout the many locations in the campaign you can find shops where your Hero can purchase and even sell items. Since resources are restricted to in-game scenarios, items that are bought and sold on the campaign map are done through crowns - a currency used only on the campaign map. Each shop can stock up to four items and they are replenished and randomised each time your Hero moves on the campaign map. Buying Items Every item has a value rating which determines the cost in both resources and crowns. However, the shops in the campaign charge more for the items than they are actually worth. But the amount varies between shops. Early game shops in the campaign tend to rip you off more than those found later on. *Insert value-to-crowns formula here* Item rarity is also taken into account for the campaign shops but each shop has a limit to how rare the item can be. This means some shops can never sell certain items. The best shops to buy items from (the shop that charges the least for them) are the shops in Yrm, DrakDum and Siria (in that order). However, Enmouth can get a hold of better items than Siria but charge more in general for items. The Yrm shop can get a hold of every non-restricted item in the game, including Artifacts and even Set items. Unfortunately, due to a bug players can't actually get to the Yrm shop. This makes the Drak Dum shop the best accessible shop in the game. (You'll need to be allied with Dwarves to visit the shop.) Selling Items Buying an item will cost more than the item is worth, selling an item is the opposite by a considerable amount. Most shops in the campaign will be reluctant to purchase items from you and will only pay a small price for them. Nonetheless, this is a great way to make crowns by selling those unwanted items your Hero finds during his/her battles. The best shop to sell items to is in Daros after making an alliance with the Barbarians, with the Nomads shop second best. Shop Listings There are many shops in the campaign and they all differ from each other in one way or another. Below is a list of all the shop and their details, including locations and pricing details. Sale Price is the price of the items the shop sells to your Hero. Hero Selling Price refers to the price of the items the shop accepts from your Hero. Item List